War on Renewables Claims Victory in West Virginia

In doing so, West Virginia became the first state of the 29 that currently have renewable energy targets to completely eliminate previously passed standards. The previous low bar was set in Ohio last July, when its legislature passed and Governor John Kasich signed into law a two-year freeze of its standards. It too is looking at revoking them permanently; the legislature has convened a panel, loaded with fossil-fuel advocates, to ponder whether to move ahead on this.

West Virginia's strong coal industry initially supported its very broad renewable energy standards when they passed in 2009.

The rejection of its energy future in this coal-dependent state was a bipartisan affair. Governor Tomblin is a Democrat. Its Senate passed the repeal 33-0 after rejecting a Democratic amendment to undertake a study to see if it actually created jobs as its sponsors contend. It passed the House 95-4 after rejecting a similar amendment.

West Virginia's portfolio, which required that 25 percent of the state's power be generated by renewable sources by 2025, was initially supported by the same people, including Tomblin, who now pushed for for its repeal. It was even supported by the coal industry at the time.

"In 2009 when the Legislature approved West Virginia's Alternative Renewable Energy Portfolio, the Act had overwhelming support from business and industry," Tomblin said. "We understand economic drivers and factors change over time, and the Act as it was passed in 2009 is no longer beneficial for our state."

According to Inside Climate News, those factors are primarily political. It called the Portfolio "largely symbolic" due to its extremely broad definition of "renewable," which included natural gas, some forms of coal burning and even burnt tires.

"Because [the 2009 law] was written so broadly, none of the utilities have to actually produce any new renewable energy before 2030," Jim Kotcon, chairman of the energy committee at West Virginia’s Sierra Club chapter, told Inside Climate News.

But Republicans took over both houses of the West Virginia legislature in November, and the repeal was the first measure they pushed and passed in the new session.

"This whole thing is a charade," West Virginia citizen-activist Bill Howley told Inside Climate News."The Republicans had made it a big issue in the elections and they want to be able to say, 'See, we told you we were going to do something about it and look, here it is.'"

A nationwide push is underway to repeal standards in the states that have them, according to an AP story, which identified the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the far-right fossil-fuel dominated Heartland Institute, as primarily drivers in rejecting renewable energy standards. ALEC has been coordinating the effort to repeal these standards for several years with its "model bill" dubbed the "Electricity Freedom Act."

West Virginia doubles down on coal and rejects renewable entirely. Image credit: DSIRE

"West Virginia policymakers recognized, in a bipartisan and overwhelming manner, that renewable power mandates drive up electricity costs, kill jobs, punish the economy and inflict substantial unintentional harm on the environment," said Heartland Institute senior fellow James M. Taylor. "Fortunately for electricity consumers and environmentalists, several other states are poised to follow West Virginia’s lead and will be considering similar legislation this year.”

Whether the concerns about jobs and energy costs are accurate is dubious. A study released a few weeks ago by the Solar Foundation found that there are now more than twice as many jobs in the solar industry alone as in coal. And coal jobs have been shrinking. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EAI) annual coal report released in January showed that the number of coal mine employees has decreased 10.5 percent since 2010, continuing a long-term trend. And in Ohio, a recent study by the Pew Charitable Group found that its freeze threatens the burgeoning job growth in there in renewable energy technologies. As for energy costs, in Ohio three energy companies are asking the state's public utilities commission to allow it to raise customer rates—to prop up and extend the life of obsolete coal-fired power plants.

As the world's population grows and the planet warms, demand for water will rise but the quality and reliability of the supply is expected to deteriorate, the United Nations said Monday in this year's World Water Development Report.

"We need new solutions in managing water resources so as to meet emerging challenges to water security caused by population growth and climate change," said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in a statement. "If we do nothing, some five billion people will be living in areas with poor access to water by 2050."

Despite a court-ordered injunction barring anyone from coming within 5 meters (approximately 16.4 feet) of two of its BC construction sites, opponents of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion sent a clear message Saturday that they would not back down.

Twenty-eight demonstrators were arrested March 17 after blocking the front gate to Kinder Morgan's tank farm in Burnaby, BC for four hours, according to a press release put out by Protect the Inlet, the group leading the protest.

Climate change is a big, ugly, unwieldy problem, and it's getting worse by the day. Emissions are rising. Ice is melting, and virtually no one is taking the carbon crisis as seriously as the issue demands. Countries need to radically overhaul their energy systems in just a few short decades, replacing coal, oil and gas with clean energy. Even if countries overcome the political obstacles necessary to meet that aim, they can expect heat waves, drought and storms unseen in the history of human civilization and enough flooding to submerge Miami Beach.

Trump has loudly declared his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement, but, behind the tweets and the headlines, U.S. officials and scientists have carried on working with international partners to fight climate change, Reuters reported Wednesday.

A Hollywood scriptwriter couldn't make this up. One day after new data revealed widespread toxic water contamination near coal ash disposal sites, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt announced a proposal to repeal the very 2015 EPA safeguards that had required this data to be tracked and released in the first place. Clean water is a basic human right that should never be treated as collateral damage on a corporate balance sheet, but that is exactly what is happening.